Women grieved in Caer Wiell, a slow sort of grief, lacking
substance or hope. The hunters came home by evening without their
quarry and without their lord—men scratched and torn and
haunted by long wandering in the wood. They drank together now in
the hall, a silent, brooding crowd, whose eyes kept much to the
table and to their ale. One man wept, his head bowed into his arms.
He was the only one.
In her upstairs chamber Meara sat with her arm about her small
son and the boy leaning his dark head against her skirts—not
asleep, but drowsing sometimes in his weariness and his fright
Meara sat still and silent, so that the maid, the only servant left
her, dared not move or question anything.
“They brought neither home,” Meara said at last when
the boy had drifted off. She looked toward the tall slit window,
toward the night and still-brooding storm. “And they do not
come upstairs. So they are not yet sure that he is dead.” She
stroked her son’s drowsing head, looked toward young Cadhla
the maid, who had pretended to be at sewing and left it now in her
lap. There was stark, constant fear in Cadhla’s eyes. There
was no law in Caer Wiell this night but fear. The thunder that had
rumbled all the day, unnatural, cracked and shook the ancient
stones. Then the rain began, at long last, a natural, driving rain.
Cadhla looked toward the ceiling, a great and shaken sigh as if
some long-held breath had passed her lips as if all nature had been
holding its breath. The boy lifted his head. “Hush,”
said Meara, “it’s only rain.”
“Does he come?” the boy asked.
“Hush, no, be still. Shall I hold you?”
He reached. Meara took him up. He was a lad of five and mostly
too proud to be held, but she took him into her lap and rocked him
now.
“Lady,” said Cadhla, “let me.”
“No,” said Meara, just that: “No.” So
Cadhla stayed, and, looking down, pricked at ill-made stitches,
flinching from the thunderclaps. The rain sluiced down the walls, a
constant spatter and whisper, and the trees sighed down by the
Caerbourne’s flood. Ever and again a gust whipped at the
curtains and sent the lamps and candles flickering, but the child
slept on. From the hall came a clattering of metal, but quiet fell
again below, leaving only the rain.
“They do not come,” the lady Meara said again in the
softest of voices, only for Cadhla’s ears. “But
tomorrow if he has not come home again, then they will come
upstairs.”
“Lady,” whispered Cadhla, “what shall we
do?”
“Why, I go to the strongest,” the lady Meara said,
“as I did before.” She looked down at her sleeping son.
Her hand smoothed his dark cap of ham His small fist clenched the
tighter on her sleeve. He was never a hearty child, Evald’s
son, but small and quick to understand too much. “Hush, what
can we do? What could we ever do? But if you can you must be away
with him, you understand?”
“Aye,” said Cadhla softly, her blue eyes round.
“I will.” But both of them understood the chances of
it, Meara most of all. Gently she caressed her sleeping son, well
knowing the men downstairs, that one of them would soon take
ambition; and then there was no chance for the boy, no chance at
all for any bearer of Evald’s blood to survive—perhaps
not even past the dawn. There were Beorhthramm and the others, fell
and bloody men, wild and bloody as her lord . . . and growing more drunken with every
passing hour. The cups were filled again and again downstairs; and
cowards gathered the courage they had lost in the woods.
But distant, from outside the window in the dark, from beneath
the walls, came the hoofbeats of a running horse.
Meara lifted her head and listened through the thunder and the
rush of wind and rain.
“Off the road,” whispered Cadhla. “It comes
from under the walls, not the gate.”
It grew nearer still, seemed to rush beneath the window, and
echoed off the stone, distinct in spite of the water’s
rushing and the blowing of the leaves. A moment it lingered below,
then seemed to move on again, and the thunder muttered.
“O lady,” Cadhla breathed, clutching the luckpiece
at her throat, “it be faery, that”
“It would be my husband’s horse come home,”
said Meara, and her eyes were far and cold. “But it could
circle the hold all night and they will not unbar the gates to see,
no, they are haunted men. Hush,” she said, for the boy
stirred in his sleep, and she rocked him, hugged him. The hoofbeats
came back again and lingered.
“Faery,” Cadhla
insisted when the pacing went on and on. “O
lady—”
But the hoofbeats passed away into the dark, and below, in the
hall, no door was opened or closed: no one went out to see. So the
sound died, and the hall grew quiet in the abating of the rain.
There were not even footsteps below. The child slept exhausted in
Meara’s arms, and Cadhla stopped her shivering. The curtain
flapped; it had come undone in the wind which now had sunk away.
Meara waved a hand toward it and with dread Cadhla got up and
approached the dark window to tie it fast, then began to trim the
lamps one by one, a homely act and peaceful in a hall that waited
murder.
“You’ll sleep a bit,” Cadhla said when she had
done. She offered her shawl. With a gesture Meara bade her spread it
so, over the boy, and some peace they had after that. Cadhla fell
asleep in the chair they had set against the door, her hands fallen
in her lap, her head resting on her ample
breast.
But Meara kept her watch, and listened to the rain which had
mostly spent its fury. No tears fell from her eyes, not now. They
are for yesterday, she thought to herself, and for tomorrow. Had
the window been wide enough she would have thought of escape; of
braiding together all the cloth they had and so letting themselves
down. But it was far too narrow for any but her son. She thought
desperately of waiting until those below were sunk in their cups
and so trying to run with him, passing through that hall. But there
was the watch below to pass, and they might be less drunken.
Perhaps, perhaps, she thought, she could win time for her son,
only a little time; and wise Cadhla, faithful Cadhla might find a
way for him and her, a country woman and not so lost as she. Or
Cadhla might somehow get outside the gates and she might let down
her son to Cadhla’s arms.
Or perhaps, after all, her lord would come home—he was
safety, at least, from worse than himself. And this was the hope
which turned her coward, for from the tower there was no way of
escape but the hall below and the drunken men.
She might feign a mourning for her lord; but any of them who
knew her would laugh at that; nor respect it even if it were
true.
They might fight among themselves, that being the way of them
when they had no one to stop them; and that was all the respite she
could hope for, perhaps a day to save her son. But that contest
only the bloodiest of them would win.
A door opened in the dark, far away and muffled. Meara heard,
and shivered in the long cold, near the dawn, waking from
almost-sleep with her son’s weight leaden in her arms. He
comes home, she thought without thinking. He has come to the gates
after all, bloody and angry.
But she doubted that. She doubted every hope of safety except
Cadhla still sleeping against the door. She looked down at her
son’s face. That wayward lock of hair had strayed again onto
his cheek. She dared not move to brush it away, fearing to wake
him. Let him sleep, she thought, o let him sleep. He will be less
afraid if he can sleep.
She heard steps of more than one man coming up from the wardroom
below, as one came into the hall. So, she thought with a chill up
her back, it is himself; he has come up with the
gatekeeper, or waked someone below. We are safe, we are safe if
only we stay still—for she knew in her heart of hearts that
if the ruffians had left their lord horseless and alive in the
forest, then there would be a grim reckoning for that.
Then came a ring of steel, and a cry—a clatter of metal
and the dying screams of men.
“Ah!” cried Meara and hugged her frightened son to
her breast. “Hush, no, be still, be still.”
“It would be himself,” sobbed Cadhla, bolt upright,
her hands before her lips. “Oh, he has come back!”
In a moment the cries and the blows and the screaming became
loud. The boy shivered in Meara’s arms, and Cadhla ran to
them and hugged them both and shivered along with them.
“It is not,” said Meara then, hearing the voices,
and turned cold at the heart. Someone was coming up the stairs in
haste. “O Cadhla, the door!”
The latch was down but that was never stout enough. Cadhla flung
herself for that chair before the door to add her weight to it, but
the door crashed open before her and flung the chair against the
wall. Men red with blood stood there, with swords naked in their
hands.
Cadhla stopped still between, making herself a barrier.
But one came last through the door, a long-faced man in a
shepherd’s coat and carrying a sword, undistinguished by any
badge or arms, but marked by a quiet uncommon in Caer Wiell. His
hair was long and mostly grayed, his lean face seamed with scars. A
grim, wide-shouldered man came in at his back, and last, a
red-haired youth with a cut across his brow.
“Lady Meara,” the invader said. “Call off your
defender.”
“Cadhla,” Meara said. Cadhla came aside and stood
against the wall, her busy eyes traveling over all the men, her
small mouth clamped tight. There was a dagger beneath her apron and
her hand was not in sight.
But the tall stranger came as far as Meara’s feet and sank
down on one knee, the bloody sword clasped in the crook of his
arm.
“Cearbhallain,” Meara said half doubting, for the
face was aged and changed.
“Meara Ceannard’s daughter. You are widowed, if that
is any grief to you.”
“I do not know,” she said. Her heart was beating
fast “You must tell me that.”
“This is my hold. My cousin is dead—and not at my
hand, though I will not say as much for men of his below. Caer
Wiell is in my hands.”
“So are we all,” she said. It was all before her,
the hope of passing the gates in safety, the hopelessness of
wandering after. “I may have kin in Ban.”
“Ban swings with every wind. And what then for
you—the wolf’s widow? Seek shelter of An Beag? The wolf’s
friends are not trustworthy. Caer Wiell is mine, I say;
and I will hold it.” He put out his hand to the boy, whose
fists were clenched tight in Meara’s sleeve, who flinched
from the stranger’s touch. “Is he yours?”
Never yet the tears had fallen. Meara held them now, while this
large and bloody hand stretched out toward her son, her babe.
“He is mine,” she said. “Evald is his name. But
he is mine.”
The hand lingered a moment and left him. “Evald’s
heir has nothing from me; but I will treat him as a son and his
mother—if she stays in Caer Wiell—will be safe while I
can make her so.”
With that he rose and gave a sign to his men, only some of whom
remained. “Guard this door,” he bade them. “Let
no one trouble them. They are innocent.” He looked down
again, a grim figure still, and holding the bloody sword still in
his arm, for it could not be sheathed. “If my cousin should
come home again he will have a bitter welcome. But I do not expect
he will.”
“No,” said Meara, and shivered. For the first time
the tears fell. “There would be no luck for him
now.”
“There was no luck for him in Caer Wiell while he had
it,” said Niall Cearbhallain. “But I will hold it, by
my own.”
She bowed her head and wept, that being all there was to do.
“Mother,” her son wailed; she held him close for
comfort, and Cadhla came and held them too.
“I would not come down to the hall,” said
Cearbhallain, “until we have cleansed it.” And he went
away, never smiling, never once smiling. But Meara laughed, laughed
as she had almost forgotten how.
“Free,” she said. “Free!—o Cadhla, he is
Niall Cearbhallain, the King’s own champion! O cleansed the
hall! That they have, they have. I knew him once—oh, years
and years ago; and the morning has come and our night is
over.”
A furtive hope had burst in Meara’s eyes, a shielded,
suspecting hope, as every hope in Caer Wiell was long apt to be
twisted and used for hurt. It forgot that the young harper Fionn
was dead and lost; forgot an almost-love, for she was still young
and the harper had touched her heart in her desolation. She forgot,
forgot, and set all her future hopes on Cearbhallain. That was the
nature of the niece of the former King, who had learned how to live
in storms, that she knew how to find another staying place.
“Mother,” her son said—he said little always,
did Evald’s son: he had learned his safety too, small that he
was, which was silence, to clench his small fists on what help
there was and never to let go. “Is he coming?”
“Never,” she said, “never again, little son.
That man will keep us safe.”
“There was blood on him.”
“It was the blood of all the wicked in Caer Wiell. But he
would never hurt us.”
So she rocked her son, and the strength left her of a sudden, so
that Cadhla must catch them both. And still Meara laughed.
There was a marriage made in Caer Wiell, when the warmth of
summer came. There were new faces in the hold, stark, grim men, but
soft-spoken and courteous, and no few of them Meara had known in
her youth, who smiled to see her, those of them who remembered to
smile at all. Some folk remained from the Caer Wiell that
was, but the worst had died or fled and the rest had mended what
they were; and more and more came to the gates, even farmers who
hoped for land—which they got as long as there was land
fallow. There were some kinsmen of Niall’s, but few; there
was a motley lot of folk met over the hills and in them, wild sorts
and never to be crossed. There was Caoimhin, lame from the attack;
and gangling Scaga; and grim, mad lord Dryw from the southern
hills. But whatever the nature of them, there was law, and more,
word spread abroad in what ill-luck the wolf had died, which kept
the mutterings from An Beag and Caer Damh only mutterings: they had
no desire to trifle with the wood and the power in it. They had
felt the storm. So they were content to close the road and to pen
Caer Wiell in its remoteness—as if there were anywhere to
go.
So Meara wed, decked in flowers and quiet as she was always
quiet, and became Niall’s lady in Caer Wiell.
And the boy Evald dogged Niall’s steps and
Caoimhin’s and Scaga’s; and learned play and
laughter.
“He is your son,” Niall would say to Meara, which he
knew pleased her. “And my cousin, and the blood of the Kings
is in him on your side.”
But at times he saw another thing, when the boy was crossed,
when his temper rose. And then twice as resolutely Niall used
patience with young Evald, for there were times when the boy could
melt his heart, when he laughed or when, though tired, he tried to
follow, matching a grown man’s steps. He would go everywhere
with Niall, onto the walls, up the stairs and down, into the
stables and storerooms. A word from Niall could light his eyes or
cloud them, and there was no stopping such adoration.
So the boy grew, and if at times Scaga cuffed his ears when he
needed it, Evald no more than frowned; it was only Niall could get
tears from him. He had a pony to ride, a shaggy beast rescued from
the mill, and it thrived and became a merry wicked kind of pony,
jogging along by Banain on summer rides. Evald outgrew all his
clothes by winter, and all his sleeves were let out, and his waists
likewise, keeping Cadhla busy. And on winter nights he listened to
the warriors’ tales.
But never to anything of Eald, for at any such tale Meara drew
him to herself and shivered, so in this Niall forbore.
Meara bore a daughter for him, a fair blue-eyed child; and after
her a sister, so he had no son, but this was, if a matter to him,
still no real grief—for his luck had brought him two, Scaga,
who went to broad-shouldered manhood, a dour young man who managed
well the sometime defense against An Beag; who learned his soldiery
of men who had fought the long hard war; and he had Evald, who grew
to youth—his heir, for Scaga had no thought of ruling
anything. As for Evald, Evald was innocent in his assumption that
the hold was his . . . for he was fierce and
prideful in his devotion—and learned to be gentle too, giving
all his heart to those who gave to him—for so Niall had
taught him.
So Niall had his daughters and loved them wholeheartedly, and
they inherited Evald’s pony when he had outgrown it. To Evald
he gave Banain’s latest foal instead.
Caoimhin died, the greatest grief that came to Niall in those
happy years: it was a simple fall, his lame leg betraying him on
the stairs. So Caoimhin slept in the heart of Caer Wiell, of a kind
of death he had never looked to die, a peaceful one.
The trees grew again across the river. Snow fell and melted into
spring, and Caer Wiell began a new tower—for, said Niall, one
never knew what the times would bring. Mostly in his heart was the
thought of the King, who was now toward his manhood, and that wars
might come which he would never see—for age was coming on
him. His hair had gone from grey to white, and one day he sent
Banain away, for she was failing and he could no longer pretend the
years away. He sent Scaga to lead her, and a troop of his armed
men, as if the piebald mare had been some great chieftain under
escort, for they had to pass the road that An Beag held: and so
they did, with never a stirring from An Beag, which chose to watch
more of late than act, having learned bitter lessons.
So Banain went, free up the dell.
“She ran,” Scaga reported later, his eyes alight.
“She seemed doubtful a moment, and then she threw her head
and lifted her tail and ran the way she could when she was young. I
lost sight of her; the hills came between. But she knew the way. I
do not doubt it.”
“You might have followed her yourself,” Niall said,
and the tears shimmered in his eyes.
“So might you,” said Scaga. “I have my wife,
my son—my home here.”
“Well, well, and Banain is home.” He set his lips.
“So, well, but so am I, and so are you, that’s true.
That’s true. There’s a time to let things go even when
we love them.”
“Lord,” said Scaga, his strong face now much
concerned. “You are out of heart about the mare. You were
right. It was her time, but it’s not yet yours.”
“Caoimhin is gone. Of all the rest he had no ties; would I
could have sent him.”
“He would never have left you.”
“Would never have left Caer Wiell,” Niall said.
“It was the land he loved, these stones; and now he sleeps in
the heart of them. I have Meara and Evald and my daughters—That foal of Banain’s will serve me, but a
strong-willed horse she is. I never liked her half so
well.”
“We will hunt tomorrow, lord, and change your
mood.”
“I never found much joy in it, I tell you truth. It minds
me of things.”
“Then we will ride and let the deer do as
they like.”
“So. Yes,” said Niall, and gazed into the embers
from his chair before the fire. A stone wolf’s head was above the
hearth. It stared back at him. He had never taken it away.
Women grieved in Caer Wiell, a slow sort of grief, lacking
substance or hope. The hunters came home by evening without their
quarry and without their lord—men scratched and torn and
haunted by long wandering in the wood. They drank together now in
the hall, a silent, brooding crowd, whose eyes kept much to the
table and to their ale. One man wept, his head bowed into his arms.
He was the only one.
In her upstairs chamber Meara sat with her arm about her small
son and the boy leaning his dark head against her skirts—not
asleep, but drowsing sometimes in his weariness and his fright
Meara sat still and silent, so that the maid, the only servant left
her, dared not move or question anything.
“They brought neither home,” Meara said at last when
the boy had drifted off. She looked toward the tall slit window,
toward the night and still-brooding storm. “And they do not
come upstairs. So they are not yet sure that he is dead.” She
stroked her son’s drowsing head, looked toward young Cadhla
the maid, who had pretended to be at sewing and left it now in her
lap. There was stark, constant fear in Cadhla’s eyes. There
was no law in Caer Wiell this night but fear. The thunder that had
rumbled all the day, unnatural, cracked and shook the ancient
stones. Then the rain began, at long last, a natural, driving rain.
Cadhla looked toward the ceiling, a great and shaken sigh as if
some long-held breath had passed her lips as if all nature had been
holding its breath. The boy lifted his head. “Hush,”
said Meara, “it’s only rain.”
“Does he come?” the boy asked.
“Hush, no, be still. Shall I hold you?”
He reached. Meara took him up. He was a lad of five and mostly
too proud to be held, but she took him into her lap and rocked him
now.
“Lady,” said Cadhla, “let me.”
“No,” said Meara, just that: “No.” So
Cadhla stayed, and, looking down, pricked at ill-made stitches,
flinching from the thunderclaps. The rain sluiced down the walls, a
constant spatter and whisper, and the trees sighed down by the
Caerbourne’s flood. Ever and again a gust whipped at the
curtains and sent the lamps and candles flickering, but the child
slept on. From the hall came a clattering of metal, but quiet fell
again below, leaving only the rain.
“They do not come,” the lady Meara said again in the
softest of voices, only for Cadhla’s ears. “But
tomorrow if he has not come home again, then they will come
upstairs.”
“Lady,” whispered Cadhla, “what shall we
do?”
“Why, I go to the strongest,” the lady Meara said,
“as I did before.” She looked down at her sleeping son.
Her hand smoothed his dark cap of ham His small fist clenched the
tighter on her sleeve. He was never a hearty child, Evald’s
son, but small and quick to understand too much. “Hush, what
can we do? What could we ever do? But if you can you must be away
with him, you understand?”
“Aye,” said Cadhla softly, her blue eyes round.
“I will.” But both of them understood the chances of
it, Meara most of all. Gently she caressed her sleeping son, well
knowing the men downstairs, that one of them would soon take
ambition; and then there was no chance for the boy, no chance at
all for any bearer of Evald’s blood to survive—perhaps
not even past the dawn. There were Beorhthramm and the others, fell
and bloody men, wild and bloody as her lord . . . and growing more drunken with every
passing hour. The cups were filled again and again downstairs; and
cowards gathered the courage they had lost in the woods.
But distant, from outside the window in the dark, from beneath
the walls, came the hoofbeats of a running horse.
Meara lifted her head and listened through the thunder and the
rush of wind and rain.
“Off the road,” whispered Cadhla. “It comes
from under the walls, not the gate.”
It grew nearer still, seemed to rush beneath the window, and
echoed off the stone, distinct in spite of the water’s
rushing and the blowing of the leaves. A moment it lingered below,
then seemed to move on again, and the thunder muttered.
“O lady,” Cadhla breathed, clutching the luckpiece
at her throat, “it be faery, that”
“It would be my husband’s horse come home,”
said Meara, and her eyes were far and cold. “But it could
circle the hold all night and they will not unbar the gates to see,
no, they are haunted men. Hush,” she said, for the boy
stirred in his sleep, and she rocked him, hugged him. The hoofbeats
came back again and lingered.
“Faery,” Cadhla
insisted when the pacing went on and on. “O
lady—”
But the hoofbeats passed away into the dark, and below, in the
hall, no door was opened or closed: no one went out to see. So the
sound died, and the hall grew quiet in the abating of the rain.
There were not even footsteps below. The child slept exhausted in
Meara’s arms, and Cadhla stopped her shivering. The curtain
flapped; it had come undone in the wind which now had sunk away.
Meara waved a hand toward it and with dread Cadhla got up and
approached the dark window to tie it fast, then began to trim the
lamps one by one, a homely act and peaceful in a hall that waited
murder.
“You’ll sleep a bit,” Cadhla said when she had
done. She offered her shawl. With a gesture Meara bade her spread it
so, over the boy, and some peace they had after that. Cadhla fell
asleep in the chair they had set against the door, her hands fallen
in her lap, her head resting on her ample
breast.
But Meara kept her watch, and listened to the rain which had
mostly spent its fury. No tears fell from her eyes, not now. They
are for yesterday, she thought to herself, and for tomorrow. Had
the window been wide enough she would have thought of escape; of
braiding together all the cloth they had and so letting themselves
down. But it was far too narrow for any but her son. She thought
desperately of waiting until those below were sunk in their cups
and so trying to run with him, passing through that hall. But there
was the watch below to pass, and they might be less drunken.
Perhaps, perhaps, she thought, she could win time for her son,
only a little time; and wise Cadhla, faithful Cadhla might find a
way for him and her, a country woman and not so lost as she. Or
Cadhla might somehow get outside the gates and she might let down
her son to Cadhla’s arms.
Or perhaps, after all, her lord would come home—he was
safety, at least, from worse than himself. And this was the hope
which turned her coward, for from the tower there was no way of
escape but the hall below and the drunken men.
She might feign a mourning for her lord; but any of them who
knew her would laugh at that; nor respect it even if it were
true.
They might fight among themselves, that being the way of them
when they had no one to stop them; and that was all the respite she
could hope for, perhaps a day to save her son. But that contest
only the bloodiest of them would win.
A door opened in the dark, far away and muffled. Meara heard,
and shivered in the long cold, near the dawn, waking from
almost-sleep with her son’s weight leaden in her arms. He
comes home, she thought without thinking. He has come to the gates
after all, bloody and angry.
But she doubted that. She doubted every hope of safety except
Cadhla still sleeping against the door. She looked down at her
son’s face. That wayward lock of hair had strayed again onto
his cheek. She dared not move to brush it away, fearing to wake
him. Let him sleep, she thought, o let him sleep. He will be less
afraid if he can sleep.
She heard steps of more than one man coming up from the wardroom
below, as one came into the hall. So, she thought with a chill up
her back, it is himself; he has come up with the
gatekeeper, or waked someone below. We are safe, we are safe if
only we stay still—for she knew in her heart of hearts that
if the ruffians had left their lord horseless and alive in the
forest, then there would be a grim reckoning for that.
Then came a ring of steel, and a cry—a clatter of metal
and the dying screams of men.
“Ah!” cried Meara and hugged her frightened son to
her breast. “Hush, no, be still, be still.”
“It would be himself,” sobbed Cadhla, bolt upright,
her hands before her lips. “Oh, he has come back!”
In a moment the cries and the blows and the screaming became
loud. The boy shivered in Meara’s arms, and Cadhla ran to
them and hugged them both and shivered along with them.
“It is not,” said Meara then, hearing the voices,
and turned cold at the heart. Someone was coming up the stairs in
haste. “O Cadhla, the door!”
The latch was down but that was never stout enough. Cadhla flung
herself for that chair before the door to add her weight to it, but
the door crashed open before her and flung the chair against the
wall. Men red with blood stood there, with swords naked in their
hands.
Cadhla stopped still between, making herself a barrier.
But one came last through the door, a long-faced man in a
shepherd’s coat and carrying a sword, undistinguished by any
badge or arms, but marked by a quiet uncommon in Caer Wiell. His
hair was long and mostly grayed, his lean face seamed with scars. A
grim, wide-shouldered man came in at his back, and last, a
red-haired youth with a cut across his brow.
“Lady Meara,” the invader said. “Call off your
defender.”
“Cadhla,” Meara said. Cadhla came aside and stood
against the wall, her busy eyes traveling over all the men, her
small mouth clamped tight. There was a dagger beneath her apron and
her hand was not in sight.
But the tall stranger came as far as Meara’s feet and sank
down on one knee, the bloody sword clasped in the crook of his
arm.
“Cearbhallain,” Meara said half doubting, for the
face was aged and changed.
“Meara Ceannard’s daughter. You are widowed, if that
is any grief to you.”
“I do not know,” she said. Her heart was beating
fast “You must tell me that.”
“This is my hold. My cousin is dead—and not at my
hand, though I will not say as much for men of his below. Caer
Wiell is in my hands.”
“So are we all,” she said. It was all before her,
the hope of passing the gates in safety, the hopelessness of
wandering after. “I may have kin in Ban.”
“Ban swings with every wind. And what then for
you—the wolf’s widow? Seek shelter of An Beag? The wolf’s
friends are not trustworthy. Caer Wiell is mine, I say;
and I will hold it.” He put out his hand to the boy, whose
fists were clenched tight in Meara’s sleeve, who flinched
from the stranger’s touch. “Is he yours?”
Never yet the tears had fallen. Meara held them now, while this
large and bloody hand stretched out toward her son, her babe.
“He is mine,” she said. “Evald is his name. But
he is mine.”
The hand lingered a moment and left him. “Evald’s
heir has nothing from me; but I will treat him as a son and his
mother—if she stays in Caer Wiell—will be safe while I
can make her so.”
With that he rose and gave a sign to his men, only some of whom
remained. “Guard this door,” he bade them. “Let
no one trouble them. They are innocent.” He looked down
again, a grim figure still, and holding the bloody sword still in
his arm, for it could not be sheathed. “If my cousin should
come home again he will have a bitter welcome. But I do not expect
he will.”
“No,” said Meara, and shivered. For the first time
the tears fell. “There would be no luck for him
now.”
“There was no luck for him in Caer Wiell while he had
it,” said Niall Cearbhallain. “But I will hold it, by
my own.”
She bowed her head and wept, that being all there was to do.
“Mother,” her son wailed; she held him close for
comfort, and Cadhla came and held them too.
“I would not come down to the hall,” said
Cearbhallain, “until we have cleansed it.” And he went
away, never smiling, never once smiling. But Meara laughed, laughed
as she had almost forgotten how.
“Free,” she said. “Free!—o Cadhla, he is
Niall Cearbhallain, the King’s own champion! O cleansed the
hall! That they have, they have. I knew him once—oh, years
and years ago; and the morning has come and our night is
over.”
A furtive hope had burst in Meara’s eyes, a shielded,
suspecting hope, as every hope in Caer Wiell was long apt to be
twisted and used for hurt. It forgot that the young harper Fionn
was dead and lost; forgot an almost-love, for she was still young
and the harper had touched her heart in her desolation. She forgot,
forgot, and set all her future hopes on Cearbhallain. That was the
nature of the niece of the former King, who had learned how to live
in storms, that she knew how to find another staying place.
“Mother,” her son said—he said little always,
did Evald’s son: he had learned his safety too, small that he
was, which was silence, to clench his small fists on what help
there was and never to let go. “Is he coming?”
“Never,” she said, “never again, little son.
That man will keep us safe.”
“There was blood on him.”
“It was the blood of all the wicked in Caer Wiell. But he
would never hurt us.”
So she rocked her son, and the strength left her of a sudden, so
that Cadhla must catch them both. And still Meara laughed.
There was a marriage made in Caer Wiell, when the warmth of
summer came. There were new faces in the hold, stark, grim men, but
soft-spoken and courteous, and no few of them Meara had known in
her youth, who smiled to see her, those of them who remembered to
smile at all. Some folk remained from the Caer Wiell that
was, but the worst had died or fled and the rest had mended what
they were; and more and more came to the gates, even farmers who
hoped for land—which they got as long as there was land
fallow. There were some kinsmen of Niall’s, but few; there
was a motley lot of folk met over the hills and in them, wild sorts
and never to be crossed. There was Caoimhin, lame from the attack;
and gangling Scaga; and grim, mad lord Dryw from the southern
hills. But whatever the nature of them, there was law, and more,
word spread abroad in what ill-luck the wolf had died, which kept
the mutterings from An Beag and Caer Damh only mutterings: they had
no desire to trifle with the wood and the power in it. They had
felt the storm. So they were content to close the road and to pen
Caer Wiell in its remoteness—as if there were anywhere to
go.
So Meara wed, decked in flowers and quiet as she was always
quiet, and became Niall’s lady in Caer Wiell.
And the boy Evald dogged Niall’s steps and
Caoimhin’s and Scaga’s; and learned play and
laughter.
“He is your son,” Niall would say to Meara, which he
knew pleased her. “And my cousin, and the blood of the Kings
is in him on your side.”
But at times he saw another thing, when the boy was crossed,
when his temper rose. And then twice as resolutely Niall used
patience with young Evald, for there were times when the boy could
melt his heart, when he laughed or when, though tired, he tried to
follow, matching a grown man’s steps. He would go everywhere
with Niall, onto the walls, up the stairs and down, into the
stables and storerooms. A word from Niall could light his eyes or
cloud them, and there was no stopping such adoration.
So the boy grew, and if at times Scaga cuffed his ears when he
needed it, Evald no more than frowned; it was only Niall could get
tears from him. He had a pony to ride, a shaggy beast rescued from
the mill, and it thrived and became a merry wicked kind of pony,
jogging along by Banain on summer rides. Evald outgrew all his
clothes by winter, and all his sleeves were let out, and his waists
likewise, keeping Cadhla busy. And on winter nights he listened to
the warriors’ tales.
But never to anything of Eald, for at any such tale Meara drew
him to herself and shivered, so in this Niall forbore.
Meara bore a daughter for him, a fair blue-eyed child; and after
her a sister, so he had no son, but this was, if a matter to him,
still no real grief—for his luck had brought him two, Scaga,
who went to broad-shouldered manhood, a dour young man who managed
well the sometime defense against An Beag; who learned his soldiery
of men who had fought the long hard war; and he had Evald, who grew
to youth—his heir, for Scaga had no thought of ruling
anything. As for Evald, Evald was innocent in his assumption that
the hold was his . . . for he was fierce and
prideful in his devotion—and learned to be gentle too, giving
all his heart to those who gave to him—for so Niall had
taught him.
So Niall had his daughters and loved them wholeheartedly, and
they inherited Evald’s pony when he had outgrown it. To Evald
he gave Banain’s latest foal instead.
Caoimhin died, the greatest grief that came to Niall in those
happy years: it was a simple fall, his lame leg betraying him on
the stairs. So Caoimhin slept in the heart of Caer Wiell, of a kind
of death he had never looked to die, a peaceful one.
The trees grew again across the river. Snow fell and melted into
spring, and Caer Wiell began a new tower—for, said Niall, one
never knew what the times would bring. Mostly in his heart was the
thought of the King, who was now toward his manhood, and that wars
might come which he would never see—for age was coming on
him. His hair had gone from grey to white, and one day he sent
Banain away, for she was failing and he could no longer pretend the
years away. He sent Scaga to lead her, and a troop of his armed
men, as if the piebald mare had been some great chieftain under
escort, for they had to pass the road that An Beag held: and so
they did, with never a stirring from An Beag, which chose to watch
more of late than act, having learned bitter lessons.
So Banain went, free up the dell.
“She ran,” Scaga reported later, his eyes alight.
“She seemed doubtful a moment, and then she threw her head
and lifted her tail and ran the way she could when she was young. I
lost sight of her; the hills came between. But she knew the way. I
do not doubt it.”
“You might have followed her yourself,” Niall said,
and the tears shimmered in his eyes.
“So might you,” said Scaga. “I have my wife,
my son—my home here.”
“Well, well, and Banain is home.” He set his lips.
“So, well, but so am I, and so are you, that’s true.
That’s true. There’s a time to let things go even when
we love them.”
“Lord,” said Scaga, his strong face now much
concerned. “You are out of heart about the mare. You were
right. It was her time, but it’s not yet yours.”
“Caoimhin is gone. Of all the rest he had no ties; would I
could have sent him.”
“He would never have left you.”
“Would never have left Caer Wiell,” Niall said.
“It was the land he loved, these stones; and now he sleeps in
the heart of them. I have Meara and Evald and my daughters—That foal of Banain’s will serve me, but a
strong-willed horse she is. I never liked her half so
well.”
“We will hunt tomorrow, lord, and change your
mood.”
“I never found much joy in it, I tell you truth. It minds
me of things.”
“Then we will ride and let the deer do as
they like.”
“So. Yes,” said Niall, and gazed into the embers
from his chair before the fire. A stone wolf’s head was above the
hearth. It stared back at him. He had never taken it away.